This chapter examines the origin of the beautiful fighting girls, which are also referred to as phallic girls. In understanding their origin, it is important to consider the particularities of the ...
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This chapter examines the origin of the beautiful fighting girls, which are also referred to as phallic girls. In understanding their origin, it is important to consider the particularities of the media environment of manga and anime. The manga and anime which have emerged within the framework of Japanese representational culture with its fundamentally high-context nature have refined the qualities of atemporality, simultaneity, and multiple personality to such an extent as to produce a representational space in which communication and transmission of information have become extremely efficient. The icon of the beautiful fighting girl enables the potential for an omnidirectional sexuality latent with pedophilia, homosexuality, fetishism, sadism, masochism, and other perversions. Loving the phallic girl, therefore, is a choice made toward greater self-awareness of one’s sexuality.Less

A Genealogy of the Beautiful Fighting Girl

Saitō Tamaki

Published in print: 2011-03-25

This chapter examines the origin of the beautiful fighting girls, which are also referred to as phallic girls. In understanding their origin, it is important to consider the particularities of the media environment of manga and anime. The manga and anime which have emerged within the framework of Japanese representational culture with its fundamentally high-context nature have refined the qualities of atemporality, simultaneity, and multiple personality to such an extent as to produce a representational space in which communication and transmission of information have become extremely efficient. The icon of the beautiful fighting girl enables the potential for an omnidirectional sexuality latent with pedophilia, homosexuality, fetishism, sadism, masochism, and other perversions. Loving the phallic girl, therefore, is a choice made toward greater self-awareness of one’s sexuality.

From Cutie Honey and Sailor Moon to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the worlds of Japanese anime and manga teem with prepubescent girls toting deadly weapons. Sometimes overtly sexual, always ...
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From Cutie Honey and Sailor Moon to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the worlds of Japanese anime and manga teem with prepubescent girls toting deadly weapons. Sometimes overtly sexual, always intensely cute, the beautiful fighting girl has been both hailed as a feminist icon and condemned as a symptom of the objectification of young women in Japanese society. This book offers an interpretation of this alluring and capable figure. The beautiful fighting girl is a complex sexual fantasy that paradoxically lends reality to the fictional spaces she inhabits. As an object of desire for male otaku (obsessive fans of anime and manga), she saturates these worlds with meaning even as her fictional status demands her ceaseless proliferation and reproduction. Rejecting simplistic moralizing, this book understands the otaku’s ability to eroticize and even fall in love with the beautiful fighting girl not as a sign of immaturity or maladaptation but as a result of a heightened sensitivity to the multiple layers of mediation and fictional context that constitute life in our hypermediated world—a logical outcome of the media they consume.Less

Beautiful Fighting Girl

Saito Tamaki

Published in print: 2011-03-25

From Cutie Honey and Sailor Moon to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the worlds of Japanese anime and manga teem with prepubescent girls toting deadly weapons. Sometimes overtly sexual, always intensely cute, the beautiful fighting girl has been both hailed as a feminist icon and condemned as a symptom of the objectification of young women in Japanese society. This book offers an interpretation of this alluring and capable figure. The beautiful fighting girl is a complex sexual fantasy that paradoxically lends reality to the fictional spaces she inhabits. As an object of desire for male otaku (obsessive fans of anime and manga), she saturates these worlds with meaning even as her fictional status demands her ceaseless proliferation and reproduction. Rejecting simplistic moralizing, this book understands the otaku’s ability to eroticize and even fall in love with the beautiful fighting girl not as a sign of immaturity or maladaptation but as a result of a heightened sensitivity to the multiple layers of mediation and fictional context that constitute life in our hypermediated world—a logical outcome of the media they consume.

This chapter features the commentary of Hiroki Azuma regarding the impact of Beautiful Fighting Girl to the discourse of the imagination and sexuality of otaku. He claims that the book is loaded with ...
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This chapter features the commentary of Hiroki Azuma regarding the impact of Beautiful Fighting Girl to the discourse of the imagination and sexuality of otaku. He claims that the book is loaded with contradictions, which create a dissonance. The book gave him the opportunity to reexamine his position on the subject of otaku as he disagreed with everything it said. He also says that his disagreement had to do with his doubts about the usefulness of the analysis of otaku based on their sexuality and the usefulness of a psychoanalytic methodology.Less

The Emergence of the Phallic Girls

Saitō Tamaki

Published in print: 2011-03-25

This chapter features the commentary of Hiroki Azuma regarding the impact of Beautiful Fighting Girl to the discourse of the imagination and sexuality of otaku. He claims that the book is loaded with contradictions, which create a dissonance. The book gave him the opportunity to reexamine his position on the subject of otaku as he disagreed with everything it said. He also says that his disagreement had to do with his doubts about the usefulness of the analysis of otaku based on their sexuality and the usefulness of a psychoanalytic methodology.

This chapter assesses how otaku outside Japan perceive beautiful fighting girls, emphasizing the diversity of “anime fans.” In online interviews conducted with anime fans in the West, most of the ...
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This chapter assesses how otaku outside Japan perceive beautiful fighting girls, emphasizing the diversity of “anime fans.” In online interviews conducted with anime fans in the West, most of the respondents confused the beautiful fighting girl and the Amazonian woman warrior, widening the definition of beautiful fighting girls to encompass brave women in general. The beautiful fighting girl doesn’t appear to have emerged as a genre in the West the same way that it has in Japan. The chapter then reviews Benjamin Liu’s thesis on the relationship between anime and feminism, which assumes that works, such as The Rose of Versailles (Berusaiyu no bara), Gigi and the Fountain of Youth (Mahō no purinsesu Minkii Momo), and Sailor Moon, in which females act masculine, undergo transformation, and engage in witchcraft, symbolize improvement in the status of women.Less

Letter from An Otaku

Saitō Tamaki

Published in print: 2011-03-25

This chapter assesses how otaku outside Japan perceive beautiful fighting girls, emphasizing the diversity of “anime fans.” In online interviews conducted with anime fans in the West, most of the respondents confused the beautiful fighting girl and the Amazonian woman warrior, widening the definition of beautiful fighting girls to encompass brave women in general. The beautiful fighting girl doesn’t appear to have emerged as a genre in the West the same way that it has in Japan. The chapter then reviews Benjamin Liu’s thesis on the relationship between anime and feminism, which assumes that works, such as The Rose of Versailles (Berusaiyu no bara), Gigi and the Fountain of Youth (Mahō no purinsesu Minkii Momo), and Sailor Moon, in which females act masculine, undergo transformation, and engage in witchcraft, symbolize improvement in the status of women.

This chapter presents a genealogy and history of the beautiful fighting girl. This genealogy consists of many works, which span a number of spheres: animated films, live-action films, comics, and ...
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This chapter presents a genealogy and history of the beautiful fighting girl. This genealogy consists of many works, which span a number of spheres: animated films, live-action films, comics, and even computer games. The beautiful fighting girl is so much a part of the fabric of television anime history that it has already attained its particular universality. Fighting heroines are not particularly unusual in the West, but still there are relatively few in the West compared with the number in Japan. Disney’s Mulan (1998), was the first Disney anime to be set in East Asia, and the first Disney story that had a beautiful fighting girl as its heroine.Less

The Strange Kingdom of Henry Darger

Saitō Tamaki

Published in print: 2011-03-25

This chapter presents a genealogy and history of the beautiful fighting girl. This genealogy consists of many works, which span a number of spheres: animated films, live-action films, comics, and even computer games. The beautiful fighting girl is so much a part of the fabric of television anime history that it has already attained its particular universality. Fighting heroines are not particularly unusual in the West, but still there are relatively few in the West compared with the number in Japan. Disney’s Mulan (1998), was the first Disney anime to be set in East Asia, and the first Disney story that had a beautiful fighting girl as its heroine.